Eat Me Build Me

 

Edible or The Architecture of Metabolism

Tallin Architecture Biennale

GSAPP, Columbia University

 

Lola Ben Alon, Sharon Yavo-Ayalon

 

As an experiment, the [EAT ME BUILD ME] project is a first-of-its-kind attempt to expose the similarities and converge the almost parallel historical and geographic routes of building with and eating earth. It speculates a

larger scope of building supply chain mechanisms, where earth-based materials (namely, mud, or dirt) are perceived not as an ineffectual matter, but as a multidimensional resource that can be used for both a shelter and a meal, thus offering a futuristic perspective to the growing field of knowledge that investigate healthier substances in building materials.

 

the [EAT ME BUILD ME] project is both a tactical and conceptual exercise. It aims to examine and re-discover supply chains of readily available earth-based materials as both building and nutritional substances. It offers a  unique perspective on human metabolism and nutrition possible by ingesting our surrounding building assemblies. This speculative text and installation aims to radically suggests that earth- and bio-based assemblies can be submerged within building facades as natural, healthy, nontoxic, and presumably - edible building mass. Taking the green facades where food is grown upon fabric systems or containers a step forward, the uniqueness of this suggestion is the use of the agricultural nutritional substance as the building material itself.